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English
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Part 2 of The Adventures of my favourite ARC Trooper
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Published:
2022-01-29
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1,073
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1/1
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Dropping in five, lads

Summary:

Jossunt was a small planet in Hutt Space. SoroSuub Corporation, a Republic aligned industrial conglomerate, had a large interest there during the Clone Wars due to the large twi'lek worker's community resident there and the proximity to a conjunction of local trade routes important to the alloys industry. This twi'lek worker's community was, according to perspective, either engaged in community self-organisation by 22BBY in order to establish safer and more rewarding working conditions via a worker's union. Alternatively, and to the eyes of the militarist faction of the Republic, they were displaying ideological proximity to Separatist organisations who were exploiting their naiveté in order to infiltrate their ranks with Separatist aligned figures, who threatened the beginnings of a Separatist militancy on the planet. Elements of the 327th Sky Corps were therefore deployed to Jossunt to attempt a preemptive nullification of this worrying possibility.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

OPERATION ORCHARD LOCATION: PLANET, JOSSUNT, HUTT SPACE, OUTER RIM TERRITORIES PAGE 2 OF 7: MISSION AND EXECUTION RESTRICTED: HANDLING AND ENCRYPTION GUIDELINES PAGE 1

 

Mission Outline

 

Start point: RNS Kur, Rakata Prime, Ord Radama, Venator, Pelta classes (Pennant numbers: V-513, P-790, P-872), making atmospheric entry.

 

Insertion via HALB (High Altitude Low Burn), selection of independent chalk LZs. Chalk leader beacon frequencies outlined page 6.

 

Chalks 1-6 will control streets Aurek, Besh, Cresh, Dorn, Esk, and Enth. Chalk 7 (ARC-2747) will storm the target building as soon as chalks 1-6 report in. 

 

If targets outlined in Objective 1 are not located in the target building or area closed off within 150 minutes of chalks reporting, QRF of 1st and 3rd battalions on board RNS Republic Prosperity will arrive via LAAT/i in order to expand the controlled area for search for Objective 1 targets. Orbital bombardment support (OBS) will be provided to Base Delta Level 4. 

 

Objectives:


  • Detain or eliminate 3 (three) Separatist emissaries to local popular separatism organisation The Broken Hearts, intelligence files attached (See: Hearts, Broken; Mallee, Chubla; Dala, Arwen; Algoll, Strewn)
  • Ensure security of SoroSuub Corporation compound, property and personnel 
  • Conduct search for traces of SDA, Separatist feeling, or Separatist manufactured materiel, destruction of said materiel to occur according to Directive 3491.3

 

 

End point: Insertion vessels landing at LZ Tailor to pick up assault force incl. RNS Republic Prosperity if QRF deployed.

 

“Pressure is oh-point-oh-niner Corrie, gravity one Gee. Altitude 25 klicks.”

 

“Copy that.”

 

“Don’t trip on the broadside barrels on the way out.”

 

“Relax, do I look like an amateur?”

 

Limit leans over the tech and presses the jump lights on, then the intercom switch. The jump lights sync, and come up clear in his HUD.

 

“Jumping in five, lads, look alive.”

 

He clips the breather tubes into his helmet, gives them a kick of pressure and watches the green lights indicating a solid seal.

 

“Lovely stuff. Don’t get lonely up here.”

 

“Copy, sir. Give them hell.”

 

Limit opens the first airlock seal, steps in, through, and reaches the Hull Egress Airlock Chamber. Men in white plastoid pack it, golden yellow streaks of decoration and declaration and highlights everywhere. Skipper and Barr are immediately by his side, lift his pack up and clip it to his front. His DC-15 goes strapped to his right leg, without the pointlessly-mandated leg bag. Jetpack on the back, then drop leader beacon plugged into that.

 

“Oxygen check done?”

 

Skipper replies. “Yeah. A-OK.”

 

A voice from the airlock control booth: “Two minutes to twenty K!”

 

Limit opens the proximity comm channel briefly.

 

“Let’s go, let’s go, everyone out!”

 

They file out onto the vast expanse of the hull, armoured durasteel beneath their boots. Rubber hobnails tap strangely against the bridges that lead over the occasional gully between plates. The scale is hard to comprehend save in terms of city blocks; the vast uprising of the conning towers is hard to gauge: it’s still half in shadow; there’s barely any atmosphere to bend light round. The matt black of space is still wrapped round the lees of turrets and plates, down in the gaps between steel and steel. The twin bridges are in the light, soaring two hundred-odd metres above the hull; it plants itself a hundred metres from the jump point off the edge like it’s going full through the hull to emerge bigger on the other side.

 

A kilometre away, in the endless night, a small white shape hangs in nothing. Moving slowly yet unimaginably quickly in a straight line, changing shape as shadows rewrap themselves around it as it moves. Part of the starfighter cover pattern; V-19 probably. Suicide sled, with no shields, but what’s gonna change. TF21 always pulling the short straws. That’s the portside fighter mid-stack; there should be a cycle of three patrolling up and down the portside of the Kur on the hull’s level, as well as two more cycles above and below the hull.

 

Brothers are cheering them through the viewports of the turret fire control rooms, but it’s noiseless. Everything is noiseless, walking through near-vacuum, disconnected from proximity comms. Walking feels weird, gliding more than striding, despite the gravity generators. The strip of light from the natborn officers’ quarters low down on the con towers have no one cheering in them.

 

Limit stands by the drop, so vast it seems inconsequential, watches his chalk manoeuvre clumsily into position. It’s hard to move easily with packs and jets and weapons encumbering the legs. He jerks his flattened hands up towards his shoulders.

 

“Get ready!”

 

Palms facing outwards, pointing upwards.

 

“Stand to! Jets test!” Arms shot out and down, behind his back for that one. His jetpack interface display reads A-OK.

 

He reaches up and pats his helmet, careful of the antenna.

 

“Equipment check! Sound off for equipment check and jets test!”

 

“Three-six okay!” Comes the reply. So does two’s reply, and three, and four, and five, all the way til his entire chalk, all 35 troopers, have replied in the affirmative.

 

“Two okay!”

 

Limit roars, “One okay!” bellowing the reply through plastoid and vacuum at two’s helmet. “Go, go, go!”

 

Kemo goes first, followed fast by three, four, five, all the way back down to three-six on the end. Limit paces fast down the line as they go tumbling over the edge, slapping every man on the back or shoulder as they go. They jump differently; some go exuberantly, jumping up and out and somersaulting before they start their fall; others take a sober step forwards like it’s their doom they’re stepping towards. Barr- two-two, deep in the chalk, lunges out head first, limbs spread in X position before the edge hides him.

 

Limit comes to attention to the right of three-six, blasts him with every scrap of vocal strength he can communicate through comms. “ Let’s go! ”

 

The trooper goes rigid, exits as textbook, feet together, fists clenched across the chest. Limit follows and at once, everything is easy and beautiful, peaceful, quiet. He opens the jets and smoothly manoeuvres to the front of the stick.

 

The red roofs of Jossunt stabilise, grow larger with the spinning of altitude in Limit’s HUD.

 

***

From the fire control rooms of the portside turrets, softshell troopers see their infantry vod leave the ship in a long ripple of white dropping off the edge. The cheering dies down as they return to their seats, and wait hopefully for an OBS request.

Notes:

This started from a discussion about Republic navy ship names. countessofbiscuit suggested that all they needed was a Warspite and Indefatigable, and then it was noticed that they also lacked a Trafalgar, which led to discussions of which battles were plausible names.

Basically this operation is the same game plan as the Americans went into the Battle of Mogadishu, the Black Hawk Down deal, with- theirs was more complicated cause they weren't prepared to orbitally bombard a small East African capital city and they didn't have space ships or jetpacks, but it's structurally the same, and actually pretty solid. The reason Mogadishu went tits up was cause they did it during daylight. Usually they'd run ops at night, when the local fighters had crashed from the drug they habitually used, and they had NV advantage. When they were not off their tits, they could actually fight decently, and even down a helicopter, and it all went to hell in a handbasket from there. But controlling the block with troops at each crossroads works okay.

Base Delta Zero is "Drop a nuke every three paces", and was the Imp's playbook. How did the Republic slide into the Empire? by renaming itself and also by becoming more violent in method. Base Delta Level Four is presumably more like a heavy artillery shell per block- it's still huge for this mission.

Consider whether these folks from The Broken Hearts are a real threat, what's their deal? In the next part in the series Limit's had to deal with droids, so what? Did these people feel forced to accept a droid escort by SDA commanders in order not to get in the bad books of their backers, were the droids escort or controllers, are they radical Separatists (which frankly isn't too bad considering the Republic is dropping troops on a city to get these guys), are they union reps, are they outside experts in how to unionise? what's actually going on? Be sure that a GAR briefing isn't going to get into that.

Quite wide ranging third objective, there- your dad's blaster that he uses for self defense, if that's a droid E-5 he picked up off the street, that's gone and your family's taken in for questioning. If you're hostile to these GAR soldiers, that's potentially Separatist feeling. Sure they're slave soldiers, but they're slave soldiers of a government that will keep finding people to repress by associating anti-government feeling with the villainous Separatists, and empowering and ordering its slave soldiers to hunt down those repressible people

In Band of Brothers (Great show) they deliberately didn't jump with their weapons in jump bags, cause they cost time to get out of, and besides that there was no point to them.

This is how the Band of Brothers era guys did their equipment checks, not sure about today.